THEL’S HEART HEALTH 1996
Thel’s feet swelled, he had trouble breathing when he lay down, he didn’t feel good.
He set with his feet elevated, he tried support socks. He hadn’t ever been sick.
Sometimes I would say, “Well you could go to the Doctor”. We didn’t even have one.
He kept going. After ‘doing around’ outside, he went to the nearby station and filled the gasoline tank for the boat. He had it all done and was coming in for the day, about 3 pm. He got as far as the front door and leaned on the door facing, gurgling. “I can’t breathe, take me to the emergency room.” I started for the car key’s.
”No, I just saw Lloyd, next door, drive in. Call him and see if he can take me to the hospital.” Ruby answered and said that he would be right over. She asked if he needed an ambulance, if he was sick” I said “No, he is not sick, he needs to get there”.
Thel croaked out, “Yes I am sick.” Well, I meant that he didn’t need their equipment to get to the emergency room. Lloyd drove in our driveway and Thel got in his pickup.
I got my purse and coat, and started. At the turn, by the Boy Scout camp, in a shady place, there was some ice on the road. It had snowed a little and it had melted and froze, in the shade. I slid to the right, and cut the wheels to the left. The car slid all the way up, across the road, onto the gravel. There were cars coming, very slowly. I had time to get back in my lane. I was glad that Thel wasn’t in the car too.
At the hospital, he had tubes all over him, oxygen and medicine in, and draining the fluid off his body. Doctor Barnes is no heart Doctor, but he was the one they call to the emergency room, at Hood County Hospital, for any heart problem. He said Thel had a classic case of ’congestive heart failure’ He asked me all the usual questions, and wrote his report. Thel read it two years later. Doctor Barnes wrote that he was ‘a stubborn old man’ Thel didn’t like it and threatened to go and make him change that.
Thel got rid of the fluid and ‘come out of it’ real quick. So he kept going to this ‘good doctor’, regularly and taking his medicine.. A couple of years later, Thel had slowed down and we all knew that he had a problem.
Dr Barnes would “Lets try this medicine”---“Let’s change to that medicine for a while”
“Come back and let me give you another treadmill test.” Thel lost weight and got slower.
Benny had gone to a heart Specialist, Doctor Toby, in Fort Worth. He wanted Thel to go to him. Thel did and a sonogram there, it showed that Thel was born with 2 flappers on his aeorta valve, and he should have had 3. Blood was splashing and ‘calcifing.’ around it. He went straight to the hospital.
Surgeon, Dr Nazarian told him, “You can either have your aeorta valve replaced--or you can ‘go on,’ now.” Thel answered, “Well I’d kinda like to go fishing, some more.”
I asked if medicine would dissolve the calcifing. “That would be like ‘beating a dead horse’. I know that you are 85 but you don’t smoke or drink and are in good health other-wise.”You must wait 4 weeks until your blood gets thicker, if you can make it that long.”
April 29, 1998 Thel had his defective aeorta valve replaced with a plastic one.
Faye and Herb didn’t want to go in and see him in the recovery room.
“We had rather remember him like he was.”
Five weeks later, he drove our motor home to the reunion in Oklahoma.
He eats anything that he wants.
If Thel had listened to his ‘Good Family Doctor’, he would have kept trying ‘this and that’---until he was gone. That Doctor thought that Thel was ‘to old’ to be able to stand any kind of treatment or operation, and he would not give him a chance.
We caught lots of sand bass that summer. We would catch our limit of 25 each, come
in and clean them and go back and catch out limit again, day in and day out. We took frozen fish to both Doctors. Doctor Nazarian, the heart surgeon, just wanted to be sure that he didn’t get any catfish. We assure him that it is all sand bass.
1999-2000-2001-2002-2003-2004-2005-2006 and still going.
Thel’s first heart beat , for 84 years sounded, ’ker squee---ker squee---ker squee’.
Anyone listening to it, was always startled.
The Doctors almost turned him down for the army.
He showed them that he could do any exercise, without a problem
Now his heart has a beat, but it is very erratic. It is not regular at all.
It is startling to listen to, but it’s beating.
That steel ball that is rolling around in that plastic valve, it is working fine.
Fall 2006 Thel started forgetting, and ‘remembering things wrong.’
Doctor Toby checked the carotid arteries up the side of his neck The right side is 90% stopped up. The left side is 70% closed.
David Stroman, vascular surgeon, checked it too. He could have operated.
I know he’s a good Doctor, his office call is over $300.
Thel says there is nothing wrong with him, he may have the operation later. He is 91.
I’ve told our children and grand children that he’s done something that they can never do. In the last 6 months, he’s been stopped for speeding 7 times. He has been polite and they look at his age on hid driver license. Hehas never been given a ticket to pay. Benjamin’s Kendra said, “Yes, Daddy gets a ticket every time.”